Moralia

William Saletin at Slate is a lone voice crying out in the wilderness in support of Mark Sanford. Saletin quotes the meae culpae of Bill Clinton, John Edwards and John Ensign, each of whom followed “the first rule of adultery redemption: minimize the affair” by blaming errors in judgment and speaking of his wife as the only woman who meant anything to him. These he contrasts unfavorably with the confession of that romantic devil Mark Sanford:

I think he loved this other woman. I think he still does. And he won’t belittle or renounce that love because it was, and is, something real.

I feel awful for Sanford’s wife and kids. But compared with all the cheaters who have gone before him, I don’t think less of him for genuinely loving the other woman or for admitting it. It beats the hell out of seducing somebody, kicking her to the curb, and pretending she was nothing to you—or really meaning it.

He wasn’t just having a meaningless fling. He really loves her. Well, gosh, that makes it all okay, I guess. Turns out betraying his wife, the mother of his four young sons, is actually quite romantic.

The problem is, a married man isn’t supposed to be forming deep, meaningful friendships with women that can turn into something special and romantic. A married man is supposed to keep his damn distance from women he could be attracted to.

I’m not saying married people can’t have business associates or even friends of the opposite sex, but I am saying they shouldn’t have close, intimate friends of the opposite sex. The kind of friends you e-mail or text several times a day — every day. The kind of friends who become the first person you want to talk to when something important happens in your life. That kind of friends.

As far as throwing the other woman under the bus, well, doesn’t that go with the territory of being a home-wrecking slut? Smart women know that most of the time, the married guy runs back to wifey when he gets caught cheating. Once in a while the home-wrecker rolls the dice and gets lucky, and the guy actually leaves his wife and marries her, but most of the time she ends up like Monica Lewinsky — used, discarded and humiliated while the powerful man she fell for picks up the pieces of his life and tries to pretend she never existed.

Apparently Mark Sanford is a more sensitive guy than Bill Clinton, and Maria Belen Chapur is luckier than Monica Lewinsky. His bizarre disappearance wasn’t just your run of the mill, south of the equator booty call.

I realize I sound hopelessly cynical, but that’s because I’ve been studying politics and politicians for my entire adult life. My undergraduate major was political science, and I got my first taste of politicians’ sexual mores on a college trip to Sacramento to see California politics up close and personal. Real personal, if you get my drift. No, I didn’t have sex with any of them, but not for lack of a couple of them trying. A few years later, I was propositioned by a sitting governor in a Lake Tahoe casino. I won’t say which one, but he’s doing prison time now (lucky I turned him down) so that narrows it down if you’re curious.

I’ve written before about how money and power are inextricably entangled, and the same is true for money and sex — and power and sex. Especially power and sex. The sad fact is, women are turned on by powerful men. God only knows how men women Jack Kennedy and Bill Clinton slept with during their political careers. If Barack Obama wanted to, he could have a different woman every night of the week. The aphrodisiac of power means that even presidents who look like Lyndon Johnson can get laid, but a young president with pecs like that? Contemplating President Obama’s options must make Bill Clinton almost apoplectic with envy.

I don’t mean to imply, however, that I think President Obama has been unfaithful to his wife. Frankly, I’d be surprised to learn that he had. He’s one cool, careful customer — a man who appears to be driven more by the lust for power than the lust for women. His wife is so popular, his daughters so adorable, that an extramarital affair would cost him far more in squandered political capital than any momentary pleasure could be worth.

Does Mark Sanford wonder now if his Maria is worth it? Worth losing what looked like a pretty good shot at that brass ring in 2012? Sex and power, power or sex. It must have driven him half mad this past year. Part of me almost feels sorry for him.

I said almost. Because, you see, I’m a wife and mother of four, just like Jenny Sanford. So you’ll understand if I can’t quite manage to find anything about this affair even remotely romantic.